Most of the US economy is in a recession

3/9/2026 at 12:33:02 AM

2023 - "The US is already in a 'rolling recession'": https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/recession-mi...

2024 - vibe cession: https://www.businessinsider.com/consumers-pessimistic-on-eco...

2025 - "a recession in 2025": https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/2025-stock-m...

people just so desperately want the USA to be in a recession it seems.

by amazingamazing

3/9/2026 at 2:20:20 AM

Or maybe it is in one, but neither the government nor wallstreet wants to admit it because it will kill their investment markets, kill political careers, and cause large shifts in voting patterns which threatens established parties and companies.

When even big tech companies are starting to say it, the highest margin businesses with the highest paid workers, how do you imagine most other industries are and have been feeling?

by AngryData

3/9/2026 at 7:58:21 AM

Yeah I dislike this disingenuous and out of touch argument that "we're not in a recession because this random graph found is going up". More people can struggle to pay bills even if the DOW and S&P is up.

Most people don't judge the economic situation based on graphs the TV shows them, they judge it based on how much month they have left at the end of the pay cheque and how easy can they get a new decent job when they get laid off.

The economy != the stock market. I wish HN would get that, but since a lot of people here are asset millionaires, they're way too out of touch.

by joe_mamba

3/9/2026 at 4:40:46 AM

I find the "K-shaped" recovery a very compelling narrative. Some companies are going stratospheric, some are decaying, the average is +1% growth or so. So depending on where you are, you will see the economy as either booming or floundering.

There's plenty of little nuggets like this to point to. US 2025 GDP ex AI investment was in a recession. US equity market ex tech does not outperform e.g. Europe. And so on.

by rich_sasha

3/9/2026 at 6:49:11 AM

I'm not sure that means much. Absent AI investors would have put their money somewhere else.

by tonyedgecombe

3/9/2026 at 5:58:30 PM

Imagine a consumer packaged goods fund that focuses on premium consumer packaged goods, like the kind of more cutesy stuff you may have seen on the shelves at places like Whole Foods. You would think that the fund is doing poorly because people have less money to spend in general. However, in a K-shaped recovery, the premium goods should actually over-perform the standard options, because the people who are on tight budgets and moving to the value options, well, they weren't really buying the premium items in the first place.

Markets have an obscene number of variables to consider in any analysis. An industry can be doing both good and bad depending on what the product is, and who the customer is.

At the end of the day, I continue to believe the Housing Theory of Everything thesis when it comes to the sense that people are on an economic treadmill where nothing ever gets better. And it helps describe the engine behind the K-shaped recovery. If we can fix the rent-seeking, we should be able to get back to a world where a rising tide lifts all boats.

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every...

by scoofy

3/9/2026 at 8:40:55 AM

Depends where the money came from. If it's debt / optimistic raises based on great faith in AI, not necessarily. But agreed overall.

The tech one is more compelling. The US equity market dominance has been driven by it's very successful tech business. Everything else is perhaps in a similar malaise to eg Europe.

by rich_sasha

3/9/2026 at 1:07:24 AM

> people just so desperately want the USA to be in a recession it seems.

You've got it the wrong way around.

People are desperate to explain why their experience of the economy; Which for most people is "not good", doesn't match the formal economic metrics and definitions of a "recession". Constant layoffs, horrible job market, even worse housing market, and the lingering inflation.

The other half of this is of course, the bubble. Everyone knows AI is a bubble. Everyone knows that sometime soon, Nvidia & friends are going to come crashing down. AI may be the future, but people don't have the trillions of dollars burning holes in their pockets to justify these valuations. Even AI execs are openly admitting there's a bubble.

So there's heightened interest in the economy minus AI; What are things going to look like without the bubble? How much is AI hype propping up the economic indicators, if not the economy as a whole?

The alarm being that the answers are "bad" and "a lot" respectively. While direct AI investment spending has a limited effect, so much of the US' spending is driven by those whose money is from assets (the rich and the retired), that the stock market's soaring has an outsized impact. And when the bubble bursts, the stock market crashes, and that spending vanishes.

by SlinkyOnStairs

3/9/2026 at 1:45:01 AM

Less: "its a bubble"

More: "labor market and consumer spending is less meaningful than ever before"

The masses are unable to truly internalize the latter.

by YinglingHeavy

3/9/2026 at 5:46:35 AM

I recently learned that in the US there are now more private equity/VC funds than there are McDonald's locations, which may indicate that the majority of consumer spending is irrelevant to the top 'n'%

https://www.thedailyupside.com/advisor/investing-strategies/...

by ludicrousdispla

3/9/2026 at 5:15:04 AM

Less meaningful, or less represented? If you sell your foundation out beneath yourself, the entire structure might come down. No matter how valuable it is to sell that rebar out of the concrete now, or how many additions that money allows you to add on top, it is likely not a sound strategy long term.

by AngryData

3/9/2026 at 1:27:49 AM

I upvoted the parent, read your comment, unvoted and upvoted yours. I think what you're saying describes how I feel exactly.

by ddxv

3/9/2026 at 4:19:23 AM

Question - has any previous bubble been so thoroughly called out as a bubble? The dotcom and 2008 real estate ones sure weren’t. Some people did, but not “everyone.”

by AuryGlenz

3/9/2026 at 5:37:11 AM

Could be thanks to the Internet and that most of the adults today use Internet and have experienced a bubble before.

by bulbar

3/9/2026 at 1:19:35 AM

I go to bed dreaming of putting money in a 401k again…

by reactordev

3/9/2026 at 9:45:01 AM

The Biden administration missed this completely.

They looked at headline numbers and saw that everything was improving and couldn’t understand why people were behaving as if we were in a recession.

The current situation is a lot worse. Everything isn’t improving. It’s improving but more slowly, flat or getting worse. So the administration is reduced to pointing to the only things that are improving (albeit more slowly). Hence the Attorneh General’s infamous response in her congressional hearing on the Epstein files, that the Dow was over 50k.

Ultimately it comes down to the K shaped economy. The upper arm of the K is doing better than the lower arm is doing worse, so the average is a rise, but in reality the number of people in the lower arm is significantly greater than the number of people in the upper, hence the “vibecession”.

by hshdhdhj4444

3/9/2026 at 6:52:00 AM

>People are desperate to explain why their experience of the economy ...

Wasn't there some polling recently that showed that most people thought they were doing well themselves but that everybody else was suffering. Clearly that doesn't add up and it's largely down to the overly negative tone of the news media.

by tonyedgecombe

3/9/2026 at 12:55:03 PM

I think more so people saw past cycles as relatively predictable and sever since the mortgage crisis they are looking for bits of that expectation.

Also ... doom and gloom gets more views.

by duxup

3/9/2026 at 1:08:22 AM

Our public discourse is focused mainly on 'things are terrible because of the other person'. MAGA shows this since it is predicated purely on this concept. You can only make something great again if it isn't great now. The challenge is that yelling it just to make the other person look bad hides when it actually happens and makes avoiding it hard since you are taking the wrong actions at the wrong time.

Even if we are in a recession, we need to start fostering looking towards the future. Not just trying to 'fix' things, but actually looking towards doing new big things. As John Green might say, there are two basic ways you can make the world better. You can decrease the suck or increase the awesome. I take this to imply that if you only decrease the suck then you can never be better than you were. It may be necessary but you also need to increase the awesome to keep growing and America hasn't been focused on the awesome for a while now. Let's increase the awesome even if there is suck still around.

by jmward01

3/9/2026 at 3:16:18 PM

At any given time, there are enough economists fearing a recession to write an article about it. Doesn't mean they're always wrong though, recessions do happen.

by thrance

3/9/2026 at 12:51:03 AM

I don't think it's a /want/ per se - it's more of an overriding sense that that is where the economy is heading, or is, under the current set of economic policies.

Nobody would care for a millisecond about the doomsayers if there wasn't some dread in their lives about what's happening.

by awesome_dude

3/9/2026 at 12:53:35 AM

to be fair, it implies nothing about current state of the US economy and likelihood of recession now. Induction conclusion is not the one which suits the case.

by vld_chk

3/9/2026 at 12:56:51 AM

[dead]

by monero-xmr

3/9/2026 at 12:16:28 AM

that's pretty obvious to everyone in the US

what's not obvious to most people - is how e.g other countries that are already struggling will get into deeper depths e.g UK where cost of energy was super high. UK is not bombing Iran, but their economy will cry more than the US

what's not obvious is how a few oil Barrons will make so much money in the next few weeks e.g those in Texas - their great grand-children will never need to work. Defense contractors will also make out like bandits & those politically connected. While everyone else in the US losses.

what's not obvious is the money pumped into A.I so far is about to go kaput (energy demands -- remember Qatar has started not honoring gas contracts - what's gas used to ? power turbines in power plants)

if you're in the US/Netherlands you will be okay in terms of food, if you're in the UK, Middle East, Australia (food is about to become more expensive & tricky)

if you're in Africa your government is about to con you through massive fuel prices at the pump

by dzonga

3/9/2026 at 12:38:05 AM

> if you're in the UK, Middle East, Australia (food is about to become more expensive & tricky)

Australias not in a terrible position. We produce ~50% of our NPK fertilizers used, and this is down primarily because were importing more from places with cheaper/distant environmental impact. Conversely, IIRC, UK and Ineos just shut down their significant last fertilizer plant and the north sea fields is its own thing.

Similarly we have suitable local gas supply for the needed feedstock. And you can see the govt already starting to restrict (“reserve”) exports. Which, of course, will contribute to the global problem.

AU as a whole is a commodity and food exporter. Of course global commodity squeezes make Everyone poorer, I believe ricardo. I dont see our local position being anywhere as fragile as europe and me, unless Im missing something.

But I dont see AU being anywhere near as fragile as Sri Lanka circa 2022-23.

by donavanm

3/9/2026 at 1:00:15 AM

We are vulnerable in Australia though because we have to move food large distances from farms to cities and are unusually road-dependent for those kind of distances (most countries use much more freight rail). Large diesel price rises are going to be extremely painful for us.

And electricity and manufacturing too, since we have no real gas reservation policy and the exporters were allowed to build enough capacity to export basically every single joule of gas that we produce (and they pay a fraction of the royalties that countries like Qatar rake in). So locals and local businesses pay very high prices so the gas companies can export most of our supply overseas...

by stephen_g

3/9/2026 at 1:24:53 AM

Diesel price rising can be easily fixed though.

The Government collects 51.6 cents per litre on Fuel and Diesel, they'd need to just temporarily cut back on some of their obscene fuel margins to keep everything within steady-state.

The question is, will the Government do so?

by iso-logi

3/9/2026 at 1:59:30 AM

But what if there's not enough diesel?

That's what at stake here, with oil exports from the Middle East dwindling... Oil price might not even go up that much, or for that long, if the economy crashes hard enough.

by Xixi

3/9/2026 at 4:59:59 AM

The cynic in me thinks we will be squeezed anyway because australian leaders apparently love to sell off everything to the global market with little concern for the residents. Why squeeze just domestic or just global when you can do both and collect even more profit?

by mcdeltat

3/9/2026 at 12:54:42 AM

The Australians are currently pointing to diesel reserves or on hand in the farms is quite low, suggesting that mechanised cropping/transport of farm products is going to provide a pinch point.

I have no idea if the reports are accurate, or an attempt to put the market into readiness for inflation.

edit: Whether real or imagined, there is panic buying of petrol happening - this could lead to supply issues by itself.

https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/1rohwzl/fuel_pan...

by awesome_dude

3/9/2026 at 7:56:01 AM

As someone who has done physical work at the sites of Australian diesel reserves, they aren't designed to last that long.

I do still feel we're better off than most. We can actually offset the price of fuel by reducing the government excise, and even subsidising it. We've done it before. 2 gulf wars, a global oil crisis, general middle east chaos? Australia has typically done better than most.

Would still be good if we had an actual sovereign mineral fund and hadn't sold our gas rights to everyone else, but I suppose we have to live with the stupid shit the previous governments have done.

by Intermernet

3/9/2026 at 12:47:04 AM

> UK where cost of energy was super high. UK is not bombing Iran, but their economy will cry more than the US.

UK isn't exactly rich on energy resources, especially after the North Sea oil dried out. Living in a global economy, most oil is still priced in dollars - which the UK can't print - resulting in a tough energy market in the UK and many other places.

Wars are the worst enemies of good life and economic development, it's profoundly revealing to watch how two of largest and richest countries in the world, with the absolute largest nuclear arsenals, are both engaged in the destruction of other countries - one for each... for now.

Both of the attacked countries are fairly large and have significant impact on global prosperity and supply chains...

This isn't a fairy tale.

by bigbadfeline

3/9/2026 at 6:20:03 AM

Even banks are backing out of AI data centers as the risk is too great. Tells you right away that they know the risk exceeds even their willingness to finance the wealthiest ambitions.

by brandensilva

3/9/2026 at 12:44:59 AM

> UK where cost of energy was super high

“Was”?

by arrowsmith

3/9/2026 at 1:13:07 AM

Probably missing 'already', that's how I understood the sentence.

by orwin

3/9/2026 at 2:31:46 AM

Yeah in rich countries nobody is going to starve- at worst you'll have to shop at Aldi. In Africa the price of bread actually matters...

by PearlRiver

3/9/2026 at 11:14:39 AM

>Yeah in rich countries nobody is going to starve- at worst you'll have to shop at Aldi.

Except that people in rich countries expect a higher bar for their standard of living than just avoiding starvation given the amount of taxes they pay and how expensive life is.

It's not like if you live in a wealthy country it's all sunshine and roses, you're subjected to continuous mass layoffs while still paying wealthy country levels of rent, and people here were already shopping at Lidl to stay afloat. If you keep squeezing them further, they'll just vote the most radical left/right wing candidate who promises to flip the monopoly board over and you don't want that. Telling them to eat (Lidl) cake is never gonna end up well.

by joe_mamba

3/9/2026 at 11:16:43 AM

>if you're in the US/Netherlands you will be okay in terms of food

I don't get it. Why is Netherlands in the same boat as the US? Do they have some crazy oil reserves I don't know about?

by joe_mamba

3/9/2026 at 6:22:22 PM

They are a net food exporter.

by John23832

3/9/2026 at 12:51:33 AM

This is one of likely many shocks that will reward those nations that are leading on cutting fossil fuel use - and punish the laggards.

by standardUser

3/8/2026 at 11:15:49 PM

> "Excluding new era investment, the other 89% of real private spending rose by only 1% with no job creation," the strategist wrote.

That isn’t what a recession is

by mr_00ff00

3/8/2026 at 11:35:42 PM

We've been redefining recession recently, it may not matter much what the textbook definition is.

by _heimdall

3/9/2026 at 7:29:19 AM

It does matter. It's best not to let politicians redefine the facts in their favour.

by tonyedgecombe

3/8/2026 at 11:49:28 PM

What specifically has changed?

by ekjhgkejhgk

3/9/2026 at 12:02:05 AM

Realizing that GDP growth can be achieved while average joe on Main Street is struggling. The billionaires doing well masks everyone else struggling to afford groceries.

In general, people are kind of calling BS on what the definition should be because we are all collectively feeling that things are doing poorly but no one is quite willing to recognize it due to the definitional stuff.

by conductr

3/9/2026 at 12:03:07 AM

> Realizing that GDP growth can be achieved while average joe on Main Street is struggling

This is most GDP growth across human history until the Industrial Revolution with the exception of maybe a half dozen civilisations.

by JumpCrisscross

3/9/2026 at 12:39:42 AM

What did your response have to do with your quote?

We can have the most growth ever as a civilization and still have the common person lose out.

The Industrial Revolution also famously had a lot of people pushed into impoverished situations while robber barons or the highland clearing lords won out, despite the GDP of those respective countries increasing.

by lovich

3/9/2026 at 2:07:28 AM

> What did your response have to do with your quote?

The notion that growth can be unequal is not something that has changed. The anomaly was the post-WWII eventide regime.

That doesn't mean there is anything natural about unequal growth. But if we want to return to that previous mode, we have to first understand what it was. And what it was was anomalous.

by JumpCrisscross

3/9/2026 at 4:40:57 AM

So what was your point?

Someone called out that the common joe was doing worse off, you responded that gdp is higher than ever.

Are you making the claim that this is an acceptable state? Or are you making another claim?

by lovich

3/9/2026 at 6:00:26 AM

> What specifically has changed?

>> Realizing that GDP growth can be achieved while average joe on Main Street is struggling

Me: that’s not new. That didn’t change.

> that this is an acceptable state?

If we’re in a Cat 3 hurricane and someone complains about it being Cat 5, pointing out that’s wrong isn’t pro-hurricane.

by JumpCrisscross

3/9/2026 at 6:31:30 AM

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47303072

can you please look at this comment that you replied to at the beginning of this thread, and understand why I might be irate at your response.

I had multiple paragraphs typed out that I have deleted so I could have a real conversation.

Why do you think I responded to you the way I did?

by lovich

3/9/2026 at 5:11:24 PM

> Why do you think I responded to you the way I did?

How is the rhethorical-question style working out?

I'm pointing out an ahistorical claim in the top post. You want to broaden the discussion without acknowledging that, and without actually saying anything, which isn't particularly interesting to engage on.

by JumpCrisscross

3/9/2026 at 5:30:17 PM

You didn’t point out an ahistorical claim. They didn’t claim that GDP wasn’t growing. They said that it wasn’t helping the common man and you jumped in with an equivalent of “but the DOW is over 50k”

by lovich

3/9/2026 at 6:30:27 PM

> They didn’t claim that GDP wasn’t growing. They said that it wasn’t helping the common man and you jumped in with an equivalent of “but the DOW is over 50k”

No, this is a ridiculous misreading. They said that "realizing that GDP growth can be achieved while average joe on Main Street is struggling" is "what changed." That is ahistorical. I may realize, today, that the sky is blue, but that's a personal discovery, not a general one. GDP growth amidst widespread poverty has been the default in most of human history; it isn't what changed.

Whether or not GDP is growing was never brought up by anyone except you.

by JumpCrisscross

3/9/2026 at 6:44:24 PM

That’s a reasonable position but none of it came across in your comment here

> This is most GDP growth across human history until the Industrial Revolution with the exception of maybe a half dozen civilisations.

And you literally used the phrase “GDP growth” and referenced how high it was so I don’t get why you’d say I was the one who brought it up.

by lovich

3/9/2026 at 1:38:52 AM

The connection is that GDP/Recession has never been about mainstreet or average joe.

Recession is usually bad for Joe and mainstreat, but the opposite is not implied. It is ignorant to think it is or was defined by the average experience.

by s1artibartfast

3/9/2026 at 1:46:30 AM

I feel it’s also ignorant to think it shouldn’t be defined by that experience. Our metrics have been misleading or we just need better ones and/or possibly a new word for how average joe talks about “recession”. A purely academic definition that has no basis in reality seems pointless to me.

by conductr

3/9/2026 at 2:10:03 AM

> it’s also ignorant to think it shouldn’t be defined by that experience

If defined rigorously, sure. But the literature is replete with measureas of downturns.

What more commonly comes up in online discussions is some dude with a vibe, which isn't particularly useful for talking about anything larger in scale than that one dude.

by JumpCrisscross

3/9/2026 at 3:05:45 AM

purely academic definistions have a tremendous number of purposes.

Just as it would be silly to define a countries military equipment production capacity by public sentiment, the same is true for purely financial GDP.

There are tons of metrics that can used to articulate how the economy feels for average joe. We have low consumer sentiment, lagging median income, GINI, opinion surveys, ect.

Using the word "recession" adds gravitas by claiming something that isnt true.

by s1artibartfast

3/9/2026 at 12:14:53 AM

Even during the Industrial Revolution as well. And even the idealized vision of the 1950s-60s that is common on the Internet was itself a fantasy for a plurality of Americans until the Great Deal began sinking in.

There was a period of slightly more income equality in the 1930s-1960s as Piketty [0] and Zucman [1] show, but this was also at the expense of racial and gender equality.

The 1970s was probably the most equal period economically speaking as Zucman showed [1].

We should not strive to return to the 1950s - we should strive to be better than anytime previously.

[0] - http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/Piketty2014Fig...

[1] - https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/SaezZucman14slides.pdf

by alephnerd

3/9/2026 at 8:38:54 AM

I asked what specifically has changed and you answered something else.

by ekjhgkejhgk

3/9/2026 at 12:14:58 AM

gdp isn't and will never be a measure for social wellbeing. it's just economic output :)

by compootr

3/9/2026 at 1:43:00 AM

I think that’s what’s changed though, as GP asked, people want to define recession as closer to the social wellbeing than a metric like gdp that is divorced

by conductr

3/9/2026 at 3:00:47 AM

Doesn’t this kinda create a problem though? Like a recession implies economic slowdown, but social wellbeing can decrease while the economy is fine.

For example, a plague or severe weather might make the average person have a worse standard of living, but if the economy isn’t net affected, it seems wrong to say we are in a recession.

by mr_00ff00

3/9/2026 at 7:02:33 PM

Our vocabulary is too limited then. I know average people only use the word recession when things are compounding negative towards their personal finances / economics AND they feel like most people they know are dealing with the same. They don't claim it's a Katrina/Harvey/[any storm name] recession, they know the differences and that storm driven struggles are usually localized / temporary with a known amount of work to rebuild - average joe feels helpless in a macro-recession as it's only going to be solved in time and/or with help of politicians they don't trust.

Plagues are a weird example, because I can't think of any situation where a plague would not affect the economy - and it should effect it negatively. I think COVID effected it negatively, we just chose to have a financial long COVID and drag out what should have been a financial disaster without all the government programs. Instead of economic collapse and starvation, we chose to massively spend money knowing it would be paid in time through inflation and also knowing it wouldn't get reallocated in an even way as pre-COVID. (That's my take, I don't know if there's any validity to it but it's just my gut feeling.)

by conductr

3/9/2026 at 11:56:05 AM

Historically, both politicians and yhe media considered two consecutive quarters of declining GDP. The Biden administration changed that, basically arguing that the definition is too narrow and they preferred to use a more broad set of indicators that just so happened to avoid calling a recession when they wanted to claim a strong economy.

by _heimdall

3/9/2026 at 8:40:41 PM

The Biden administration argued for a change. They did not convince others. It's like saying "Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico" - no one but loyalists bought in.

Economists continue to use the same definition as before, despite your attempt to blame Biden.

by IAmBroom

3/8/2026 at 11:52:20 PM

I took that as maybe referring to Trump?

by andyferris

3/9/2026 at 12:01:36 AM

Probably referring to the "2 quarters of negative GDP" rule that was seemingly revoked under Biden.

by gruez

3/9/2026 at 12:14:34 AM

It wasn’t “revoked under Biden.” That implies the Biden administration (or any administration) gets to define this. They don’t. Recessions in the United States are generally demarcated by NBER.¹

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Re...

by m-hodges

3/9/2026 at 12:26:11 AM

>It wasn’t “revoked under Biden.” That implies the Biden administration (or any administration) gets to define this.

No, not any more than "the pandemic started under the Trump administration" implies that they caused the pandemic.

by gruez

3/9/2026 at 12:28:05 AM

I just plainly disagree that a casual reader wouldn’t see the phrase “revoked under Biden” and believe it meant that Biden did the revoking.

by m-hodges

3/9/2026 at 12:36:46 AM

[flagged]

by lovich

3/9/2026 at 12:43:10 AM

>It does imply that because the Trump admin killed the group involved with preventing pandemics[1]

No it doesn't, not without massively reading in between the lines. This is getting to absurd levels of nitpicking over wording, like "autistic people" vs "people with autism".

>I assume you are being disingenuous by using that claim while also trying to smear the Biden admin.

Two can play at this game. I assume you're being disingenuous by trying to put words in my mouth over tiny disagreements in wording.

by gruez

3/9/2026 at 6:28:53 AM

That was never such a "rule"; that was 1 of 4 considerations from a 1974 NY Times opinion piece, and those 4 considerations were in turn a simplification of the overall recession considerations, as the combined 4 items were intended to be more understandable by the general public than the actual items.

Where had you heard that there was such a "rule"?

(And as others pointed out, it's a private organization, not the government, that has set and evaluates recession criteria.)

by no-name-here

3/8/2026 at 11:59:19 PM

Recessions without an external shock are rare. But you could say the rest of the economy is in stagnation. I‘m expecting real recession as soon as the LLM bubble begins to burst.

by doener

3/9/2026 at 12:00:25 AM

Seems like the definition changes to match whatever is happening when Trump is in office.

by buckle8017

3/9/2026 at 12:02:02 AM

Since inflation is going up faster than 1%...seems like it to me.

by SubiculumCode

3/9/2026 at 12:05:43 AM

“Real” means adjusted for inflation

by ultimatefan1

3/8/2026 at 11:11:55 PM

What's the base rate? Even a very healthy economy doesn't have all sectors growing simultaneously, so I'd be very curious to know if this is a matter of going from "normally 20% is shrinking and now it's 80%" or if it's "normally 49% is shrinking and now it's 51%"

by YokoZar

3/9/2026 at 12:28:50 AM

Prices, and feelings about the economy are set at the margin. A 1% change in employment doesn't sound world ending on its own, but the relative power balance between labor and management pushes wages down across the economy.

by lumost

3/9/2026 at 12:22:59 AM

> "Do we really need to continue focusing mostly on inflation when 89% of the private economy is in a recession and the 11% which is booming — new era pursuits — are by their very nature 'disinflationary'?"

I've been thinking the same thing about Australia. The federal government has withdrawn power bill subsidies, which boosted inflation figures, causing the central bank to raise interest rates. Does it really make sense to raise interest rates when peoples power bills are going up? Wouldn't higher power bills reduce people's spending without requiring interest rates to be raised? The same with gasoline prices.

by kristianp

3/9/2026 at 7:38:52 AM

Interest rates are a blunt instrument but they do have an impact. The biggest problem is the pain isn't spread evenly. If you have just fixed your mortgage for five years then they don't impact you but if you are just about to renew then you will be bearing more of the cost. If you are a net saver then increases are generally a good thing.

by tonyedgecombe

3/9/2026 at 8:07:04 AM

Australia has fairly short fixed term mortgages. There are people who are barely recovering from covid effects on the interest rates. There are many who lost everything. Another bout of "high interest rates are a blunt instrument" could cause serious problems.

Note. This doesn't affect me, and I have strong opinions on the property market in Australia, but I'm pointing out that many people will go to the wall if interest rates are increased again,despite how much I think they may deserve it.

by Intermernet

3/9/2026 at 9:38:41 AM

I think it’s well established in economic circles that unemployment goes up as inflation falls. We are seeing signs of this in the UK at the moment.

Letting it run away causes its own problems though. Take a look at South America to see what happens if you can’t manage inflation.

by tonyedgecombe

3/9/2026 at 11:35:16 AM

Inflation and unemployment are seen as results of demand. They're both regarded as effects. One isn't the cause of the other.

At least in most economic theory... Which is possibly not the best theory to put much weight in, considering how changeable and unproven it is.

by Intermernet

3/9/2026 at 4:59:05 PM

No but they are inversely correlated. As you bring inflation down you expect unemployment to rise.

by tonyedgecombe

3/9/2026 at 12:40:09 AM

Well yeah, when you exclude all the successful and profitable sectors things do start looking bad.

Just in: most people are actually short! Excluding people over 6 feet tall, the average height is only 5 ft 8!

by rappatic

3/9/2026 at 3:03:57 AM

I mean, if evryone is 5' except one guy is 10', and the government goes around saying how we have the tallest peaole, it does get hard to believe

by samrus

3/8/2026 at 11:25:00 PM

Nice moment for an oil shock.

by neves

3/9/2026 at 7:31:23 AM

The Trump recession caused by the woke right catering to minority interests.

by tonyedgecombe

3/9/2026 at 8:01:50 AM

I seriously hope your comment is missing a /s tag!

by Intermernet

3/9/2026 at 9:39:39 AM

Only slightly.

by tonyedgecombe

3/9/2026 at 12:13:16 AM

I'm always somewhat puzzled by debates around "are we in a recession?" b/c we have so many REAL TIME metrics around what people are actually doing.

e.g. credit card companies have excellent data on the amount that people are spending on. Is that not enough to determine if people are spending more or less than in the past?

I understand there are seasonal trend etc etc but even "how is spending on travel this year compared to last year around this time?" would probably have some large amount of statistical significance.

by alexpotato

3/9/2026 at 12:16:23 AM

Why would credit card companies release data showing that consumption indicates a recession? Surely they’re in the business of sustaining exuberance.

by willturman

3/9/2026 at 12:23:29 AM

Because businesses and hedge funds pay for it, eg: https://usa.visa.com/partner-with-us/visa-consulting-analyti...

by verteu

3/9/2026 at 12:27:34 AM

https://www.atlantafed.org/research-and-data/data/gdpnow

by gruez

3/9/2026 at 12:16:30 AM

The people who are spending the most in the economy don’t need credit.

by tencentshill

3/9/2026 at 1:38:01 AM

Yet more often they use credit cards than the rest of the population.

by enoint

3/9/2026 at 8:08:58 AM

The rich use credit cards because of the added rewards, not because they need credit.

by Intermernet

3/9/2026 at 2:22:29 AM

Anything released regarding unemployment and the economy are lies. If anyone in the US government tries to tell the truth they are fired.

It’s damn near impossible these days to know what’s actually going on.

All the layoffs and difficulty to find a new job should be causing a lot of suffering out there, especially in the US. Yet, everything seems to be great!

by iJohnDoe

3/9/2026 at 12:39:24 AM

Real data is delayed to give the investor class time to "reallocate assets". Also anyone publishing a story saying there's a rececession knows they will receive the Emperor Palpatine lightning treatment from the Orange Jesus.

by dboreham

3/9/2026 at 7:05:51 PM

Unlikely. Wars are good for the economy.

by amai

3/9/2026 at 8:41:53 PM

WWII devastated all of Europe's economies.

Your much-quoted claim is false.

by IAmBroom

3/8/2026 at 11:59:21 PM

> , market vet says

by m-hodges

3/8/2026 at 11:10:30 PM

Oil spiked to $110/barrel on the WTI front month futures contract this afternoon, a $20 jump up from Friday. At this pace we'll be at $150 a barrel in a week or two. If oil infrastructure keeps getting hit, even if the strait of hormuz is reopened, it'll take a long time to recover from. That's on top of the continued call for regressive tariffs and a weakening labor market. I think we're heading for a recession unless things turn around quickly, which I'm not seeing any indication of.

I'm curious if we'll get TACO Trump, or if he'll double down on this?

by state_less

3/8/2026 at 11:14:07 PM

My guess is that this time even if there’s a TACO you can’t turn back the clock on everything that’s happened. The tariffs are mostly an on/off switch. You can’t unbomb infrastructure.

by roxolotl

3/8/2026 at 11:34:56 PM

Or easily un-convince people who've been bombed that they need to hold nearby trade hostage for retribution/protection.

by Terr_

3/8/2026 at 11:39:16 PM

My understanding is that, until the hits on Tehrans oil storage sites yesterday, the oil infrastructure has been spared. Nothing that isn't easy to repair.

Ie the price increase we've seen so far os mostly pricing the closing of the staits and the risk of reduced production production is halted due to running out of storage (ie akin to a cpu "pipeline stall".

But Iran got hit badly yesterday, with tar raining on the capital. If Iran retaliates against infrastructure...

by rngfnby

3/9/2026 at 12:32:41 AM

The US is not acting rationally on Iran, this is on top of a history of acting irrationally with regards to past treaties. The game theorists would tell you that Iran should impose costs for this in one way or another, the main avenue of which is economic costs. Iran may extend this cost imposition to US aligned states throughout the Gulf.

It's a mess with limited exit ramps, Iran can likely keep bombing their neighbors and shipping blocked for years if they so choose.

by lumost

3/9/2026 at 8:18:57 AM

There was no urgency in the invasion of Iran. It was done partly because Israel wanted it, and partly as a convenient distraction. Nothing material had changed from the last decade. The US embassy was given instructions to get people out of Israel the day before it happened, and anyone who was paying attention knew exactly what that meant.

Everything that is happening now was publicly predicted and modelled at least a decade ago. Look at Shimon Peres's continual warnings to the world regarding Netanyahu. This was expected and shouldn't be regarded as something novel. Just something abhorrent.

by Intermernet

3/9/2026 at 12:39:13 AM

If the wells have been throttled back or stopped. There can be issues when production is reduced (or even worse stopped), restarting & resuming the previous production rates can be very difficult and time consuming. There’s a lot of complex multi-phase physics that can prevent the restart. Sometimes wells, just don’t restart.

I hope that you are right and we are just filling the storage tanks and waiting for the straits to re-open, so the hit to the market is minimised.

Iran do seem to be losing but that doesn’t mean the US is winning. The US needs to get the oil/gas moving through the straits and on the market, otherwise there will be big hit at the gas pumps and other economic factors.

by stoneman24

3/9/2026 at 12:55:57 AM

Producers have already been announcing force majure to legally stop production.

Qatar gas being the big one for LNG. It'll takes them two weeks to restart four to get to full production. So a tight LNG market has 20% of the world production out for three weeks.

by rngfnby

3/8/2026 at 11:17:21 PM

Heating oil in UK from one of main suppliers, for delivery next week, has gone from 60p/L to 130p+/L in last 7 days

by mtkd

3/9/2026 at 12:05:15 AM

They asked Trump what he thought could go wrong. His only response was appointing a leader worse than the last. That took just over a week and now our $1b per day is going to skyrocket when troops are deployed. Trump has to focus on federalism of elections to stop from being nurtured in November. There was never a plan and he fractured his base. I am not sure how this helps average Americans. Perhaps we’ll have some conflict with Cuba soon and China enters the frame.

by testbjjl

3/9/2026 at 12:43:26 AM

Federalism is the opposite of federal control, which I think you mean.

Also, you probably mean neutered.

by maxerickson

3/9/2026 at 12:53:07 AM

Proves I am not AI? You’re right, fighting allergies at the moment in a tub full of OTC concoctions.

by testbjjl

3/9/2026 at 12:40:39 AM

Sincerely hope he isn't nurtured.

by dboreham

3/8/2026 at 11:26:28 PM

Even if Trump goes Taco, Khamenei Jr won't accept. Remember the adversary also get a vote.

by eunos

3/8/2026 at 11:32:13 PM

Mojtaba will be dead within a month. What would it say about the entire operation if they just backed off and let Khamenei’s son take over?

by vrosas

3/9/2026 at 12:33:28 AM

It would tell us that they are incompetent buffoons which is exactly what they are.

by abraxas

3/9/2026 at 12:38:28 AM

That it was a stupid operation with a predictably useless outcome. But we also said that about the whole invading Greenland stuff, and it ended like that. And about the war in Afghanistan. And I would presume, about the Vietnam war.

Trump will say he won and move on.

by riffraff

3/9/2026 at 12:57:33 AM

> Trump will say he won and move on.

Then Trump will move on and attack China maybe? Anyway, with Trump in office I expect to see more and more chaos coming.

by tartoran

3/9/2026 at 8:21:00 AM

Cuba is next

by Intermernet

3/9/2026 at 12:51:34 AM

I imagine much of US/Israeli intel has been burned on the initial strike, and it's not that hard to hide someone in a bunker at the end of the day.

by tastyface

3/9/2026 at 1:01:26 AM

Seeme like Israel has very strong intel in Iran though. Not sure they got burned, they seem to have infiltrated deeply into Iran. Remains to be seen how it plays out in the end.

by tartoran

3/9/2026 at 2:49:17 AM

The US killed a lot of people in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq and it didn't mean squat.

Are we just doomed to repeat this bullshit?

by PearlRiver

3/9/2026 at 2:26:44 AM

On some weird level of irony this might cause a huge green transition

by bad_haircut72

3/8/2026 at 11:39:10 PM

Why care about oil when alternate fossil-fuel-free technologies have become mature? This could very well be the last straw to push many nations (except the U.S.) to massively buy Chinese solar panels and Chinese EVs to be oil independent.

by kccqzy

3/8/2026 at 11:45:05 PM

Chinese solar panels don’t help with plastics or industrial lubricants.

by kasey_junk

3/9/2026 at 12:16:43 AM

There is not going to be any shortage of plastics in the medium term.

Shale oil and gas production in the US produces vast quantities of ethane as a byproduct. This ethane is cracked into ethylene, a feedstock for making plastic. There is an oversupply of the stuff.

by wcoenen

3/9/2026 at 12:29:29 AM

The overabundance is a big part of why it's just not commercially viable to do much with recycled plastic. Places will practically give away the virgin material because they have to find someplace for it to go to keep producing other things.

by vel0city

3/8/2026 at 11:51:23 PM

The amount of oil used for plastics or lubricants is insignificant compared to the use of oil as energy. In the United States, lubricants use ~0.5% of all oil, and all industrial feedstock about 1%.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

by kccqzy

3/9/2026 at 12:02:45 AM

Insignificant is its own minima (its an absolute) and doesn't need qualification.

You're not from these parts, are you?

by gerdesj

3/8/2026 at 11:58:56 PM

About 80% of oil is burned in some way for fuel.

by throwawaysleep

3/9/2026 at 12:03:22 AM

What on earth does that mean?

by gerdesj

3/9/2026 at 12:08:14 AM

It means the oil is being used for its heat content when combusted. Such heat may be used directly or be converted to mechanical work in a heat engine.

by kccqzy

3/9/2026 at 12:42:11 AM

Exactly what it says? 80% of the oil extracted from the ground is burned. The other 20% is used to make things.

by dboreham

3/9/2026 at 1:08:37 AM

We burn 80% of the oil we take out of the ground. Oil production could drop 80% and we would not have to change anything other than demand for burning it.

by throwawaysleep

3/8/2026 at 11:43:56 PM

Because policies are not made by rational decisions but by lobbyists...

by plastic-enjoyer

3/9/2026 at 1:32:21 AM

That’s a United States phenomenon.

by kccqzy

3/8/2026 at 11:19:09 PM

He’ll taco when he sees the stock market tanking

by uncivilized

3/9/2026 at 7:44:59 AM

Israel is making the decisions here, there is no tacoing for them.

by tonyedgecombe

3/9/2026 at 1:20:38 AM

but will iran accept the taco? at this point, it seems like it may get ideological for them, and they play a different war (jihad) which would require diverting prolonged resources. we may not be able to simply just leave and revert to normal.

by bhadass

3/8/2026 at 11:46:33 PM

genie is out of the bottle on this one

by brokensegue

3/8/2026 at 11:33:17 PM

[dead]

by lakrici88284

3/9/2026 at 12:03:52 AM

Since the end of WW2, and especially since the end of the Cold War, Democratic administrations have presided over significantly higher job growth than Republican administrations.

https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.c...

by Herring

3/9/2026 at 12:23:24 AM

I was going to use this quote yesterday, but correlation is not causation.

I prefer the one where the national debt increases more under "fiscally responsible" republicans.

More correlation: more jobs are created and inflation is lower under democratic administrations.

GDP is also better with a Dem president, but it partially depends on the makeup of congress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_p...

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/deficit-us-presidents-sinc...

by jkmcf

3/9/2026 at 5:33:18 PM

At this point it's like claiming blue states have better policies than red states. Even kids in middle school understand that. They get older and try very hard to forget.

by Herring

3/9/2026 at 1:34:51 AM

Who could have guessed that a few billionaires and corporations shifting the same money back and forth between themselves wouldn't benefit the overall economy?

by mcs5280

3/9/2026 at 12:48:07 AM

I fear we’re going to enter a new depression.

by tartoran

3/8/2026 at 11:41:31 PM

The most compelling hypothesis I've heard for why Iran is bombing GC neighbors is in an attempt to pop the AI bubble. I obviously don't know if that's true, but that would be extremely clever and this article shows how effective it could be.

by _heimdall

3/8/2026 at 11:45:00 PM

I found this video pretty interesting, it talks about why Iran is going after its neighbors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIS2eB-rGv0

by vesrah

3/9/2026 at 7:52:34 AM

Literally (explicitly) a holocaust denier.

https://youtu.be/o2Nq--qU9Kc?si=DDs_73ZrEPs5UGK9&t=3684

No credentials whatsoever - IIRC a Bachelor's degree in English, but definitely not a professorship.

by Matthyze

3/9/2026 at 12:55:34 AM

This is like getting info from Grokipedia. This guy is a crank.

by AuthAuth

3/9/2026 at 12:12:38 AM

Over confidence and linear explanations. I am not impressed.

by SubiculumCode

3/9/2026 at 12:27:09 AM

Yes, he's informational but a bit conspiratorial. These people are valid points of interest - it's worth entertaining facts and perspectives that are not well highlighted in the media. Even though they are usually kind of wrong.

The truth is nobody is really fully in charge, there are competing interests everywhere, Trump is making the decisions but even he changes his mind very frequently and objectives are not clear.

It's really hard to understand intentions when decisions have to be made in a reactive manner as well.

Rubio indicated 'we had to attack, because Israel was going to go first, and we were going to lose the element of surprise'. While that is an absurd and crazy reason to 'go to war' - it's actually a very rational tactic for 'when to start' as 'first mover advantage' is enormous in conflict. You can see how 'the most powerful entity on earth' is moved by events beyond it's control.

It's almost better to describe these situations in terms of all of the factions capabilities, influence, power, motivations than it is to say 'this is why it's happening'.

Once conflicts start, they have a way of perpetuating themselves in a 'circularly reactive' way, it fuels itself as both sides have difficulty standing down.

by bluegatty

3/9/2026 at 12:45:29 AM

This guy is a well known conspiracy theorist. He's a high school teacher, not a university professor as "Professor Jiang" indicates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_Xueqin

Some discussion on reddit about him: https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/1rnnq6p/though...

by grumple

3/9/2026 at 9:01:27 AM

Breaking Bad may be fictional, but I don't think "high school teacher" is as discrediting as you think.

by fragmede

3/9/2026 at 1:20:21 AM

But is it true his video "The Iran Trap" predicted the current war with Iran? Seems like a smart guy, regardless of whether he's a high school teacher or not.

by booleandilemma

3/9/2026 at 12:16:40 AM

The gulf states are US allies that can much more easily be hit + cause damage.

They are Iran's regional enemies, that the US is effectively defending them from.

Spooking the their leaders + population puts a huge amount of pressure on Trump.

Iran has been successful in hitting Patriot and THAAD radars, those are massively expensive, years to replace.

If those go down, then Iran can 'terrorize' the region at will including keeping Hormuz closed.

Most of the Oil goes to China + India, and China is a supporter of Iran, so funny enough, they may be the one's to lean on Iran to open up.

At the same time China does not want to see Iran fall Venezuela style - it would put the US foot on the neck of China as they import most of their fuel.

Nobody is talking about the 'China' angle, but they have been preparing for war in Taiwan, and securing energy access with Iran - even hosting peace talks between Gulf states and Iran (huge move, USA not present) is key to that.

This is absolutely part of the 'Great Game' strategy, to take Iran Oil + relationship off the table for China. Not likely to happen.

The AI bubble is probably not a primary objective.

by bluegatty

3/9/2026 at 12:55:57 AM

I'm expecting China to go after Taiwan any day now. Im assuming they're waiting for the US to move more resources to the ME so they can get a jump.

by chneu

3/9/2026 at 1:29:27 AM

Probably not, they are preparing but that does not mean they will ever do it.

Xi just faced a mutiny and had to put top generals away.

Key people in China military oppose the plans.

Even as they near readiness with some things, others remain far behind, and untested.

It's an extremely risky move and they don't take those kinds of risks.

Island landing 100 km away = Chinese D-Day means absolutely enormous casualties, and no guarantees of success.

If they lose that fight, CPP will be overthrown, that sounds dramatic, but those are the stakes at that level esp. with casualties.

The #1 objective is to infiltrate and take it without a fight, and/or cause pain and get citiznes to take the 'easy pill' and Taiwan slowly comes into China fold without ever any incident at all.

Barring that a blockade would be the thing, and then only usa could even hope to run it, it would be a sight to see, and very hard for us to do as China has long range weapons now and many things specifically designed to keep USN away from 1st island chain, means they can strangle Taiwan into submission with no invasion.

But if that happens, USN closes gulf and Malaca straigths, probably goes into S. China Sea. Very bad. China needs food and fuel to import.

It's very complex and China is not a monolith, many actors, it's authoritarian yet citizens are not dummies, they protest all the time we just don't hear about it.

Probably the chances are most acute 2029-early 2030s. This is from former Australian PM Kevin Rudd how is Western World's #1 non-Chinese China expert.

Xi is playing against bad headwinds though and the direct opportunity may not resent itself.

If they 'thought like us' and were a bit more decisive and risky, yes, 'now' would be a grand time to do it, wouldn't it? But no.

by bluegatty

3/9/2026 at 2:04:23 AM

>"If they lose that fight, CPP will be overthrown,"

Xi will be probably burned at the stake. CPP will most likely proceed with new leader.

by FpUser

3/9/2026 at 2:50:42 AM

Yes, that's probably right.

by bluegatty

3/9/2026 at 1:17:43 AM

I doupt it. China is preparing, but their war machine is still building up and they know it. Eventually I expect it, but not for a few more years.

of course things can change and I've been wrong. That is my best guess though.

by bluGill

3/9/2026 at 1:03:17 AM

Can't China negotiate with Iran safe passage for its own oil only?

by cassepipe

3/9/2026 at 1:11:50 AM

Not very likely. If only China bound oil passes through the strait all others would oppose, even destroy the tankers.

by tartoran

3/9/2026 at 4:15:31 PM

That would be a bit crazy that a neutral third-party would get attacked by the US coalition just for being... neutral ?

by cassepipe

3/9/2026 at 3:42:15 AM

Goodness, no. The only entity interested in attacking tankers is China. Everyone else - even the US, wants the tankers to pass, even if it's to China.

China has huge leverage with Iran.

The issue is one of risk - the mere existence of hostilities means nobody can get insurance.

All Iran had to do was say 'it's shut down' - and insurance prices go through the roof.

No more oil.

The business math goes nuts.

by bluegatty

3/9/2026 at 4:16:34 PM

> The only entity interested in attacking tankers is China

I don't understand how that makes sense

> China has huge leverage with Iran.

Which is why it could negotiate safe passage for itself

Overall I don't get your point

by cassepipe

3/9/2026 at 9:50:33 PM

Sorry - I meant Iran.

The only entity interested in attacking the tankers is Iran.

Yeah, as it was written, it makes no sense.

I'm responding to someone indicating that 'China' would be involved in attacking tankers.

by bluegatty

3/9/2026 at 12:44:21 AM

This is the first time I've seen anyone looking for a reason! Isn't the reason manifestly obvious? They're bombing their enemies. The ones that lobbied Trump to attack Iran, and that host US defense assets.

by dboreham

3/9/2026 at 2:31:50 AM

The GCC countries do host US bases, but where are you sourcing the idea that they lobbied Trump to attack Iran?

by _heimdall

3/9/2026 at 4:27:20 AM

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/28/trump-ira...

by alephnerd

3/9/2026 at 11:48:38 AM

Thanks! Israel is obviously no surprise. I hadn't seen anything of the Saudis pushing for the attack so that's new to me, though that's only one of the GCC countries.

by _heimdall

3/9/2026 at 12:21:53 AM

> The most compelling hypothesis I've heard for why Iran is bombing GC neighbors is in an attempt to pop the AI bubble

Huh?!? ADIA, Mubadala, and the PIF are significant players but not that significant.

The Gulf States and Iran have had bad blood for generations.

There's a reason why car bombings in Al Ahvaz and Sistan-ve-Balochistan were and are respectively a constant occurrence - Khuzestani Arabs and especially Baloch from Makran are overrepresented in defense and policy roles in Gulf states like Kuwait, Qatar, UAE (especially Abu Dhabi), and Oman.

And Iran and the Gulf States (and before that the British Empire) constantly fought each other over delineating the Arabian/Persian Gulf. It was a major reason the Gulf turned to the US when facing both Iraq and Iran in the 1970s-80s.

I'm dismayed how conspiracy pilled HN has become.

by alephnerd

3/9/2026 at 2:36:22 AM

What makes you think JM conspiracy pilled? And how would you propose one tries to understand Iran's current motivations with regards to attacking gulf neighbors?

I explicitly didn't say the idea of them attempting to preempt an AI bubble pop is the reason. I explicitly said I don't know if its true.

Yes, there is a long history of bad blood between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Yes the region is a powderkeg. No, trying to understand the motivations today isn't immediately a conspiracy theory.

by _heimdall

3/9/2026 at 3:40:22 AM

> I explicitly didn't say the idea of them attempting to preempt an AI bubble pop is the reason. I explicitly said I don't know if its true

Ah.

Well in that case, the answer is "no, AI is not the reason".

> how would you propose one tries to understand Iran's current motivations with regards to attacking gulf neighbors

1. The Gulf States host Western (not just American) bases so from a tactical perspective it would be dumb not to strike Gulf States.

2. The Gulf States and the Islamic Republic have had decades of bad blood, from the Syrian, Libyan, Yemeni, and Sudanese Civil War to inciting a Shia insurgency in Eastern Saudi and Bahrain to the repression of Sunnis in Iran to disputes over NatGas extraction to attempts by the Iranian government to overthrow Gulf governments.

3. The Gulf States backed Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War which lasted from 1980 to 1988 and a war which all of Iran's leadership are veterans of. Iran openly fielded child soldiers towards the end of the war, many of whom ended up becoming leadership - while most HNers (who based on references I've seen seem to have been more in the late 70s/early 80s) were playing NESes or watching Hanna Barbera reruns, a large number of your age cohort in Iran were choking on Sarin Gas or sent in human waves against the Iraqi Army, and those survivors are who are the older members and leaders of the IRGC, Basij, and Iran today.

4. The KSA lobbied to strike Iran [2] along with Israel.

A Gulf-Iran War was a question of "when" not "if". Plenty of Gulf nationals fought against IRGC trained or actual personnel in Syria, Libya, and Yemen, and the animosity against Iran and Iranian proxies is deep in the Gulf. Similarly, the animosity against Arabs and Sunni Arab States is deep as well.

Heck, this is how Iran and Iranian proxies are depicted in young adult cartoons in Saudi Arabia [0][1] - as terrorists and a depressive death cult obsessed with martyrdom, Ali, and Huseyn.

[0] - https://youtu.be/ifwtsnQxmto?si=GS21LjeMXiSC-4me&t=767

[1] - https://youtu.be/_SHYKBD8w8Q?si=EOa-y8UL2FDf6yeR&t=1905

[2] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/28/trump-ira...

by alephnerd

3/8/2026 at 10:45:29 PM

I tend to agree with what the article says. And I would narrow it down from Tech to AI/tech.

by jmclnx

3/9/2026 at 12:31:53 AM

During the Biden administration there was a whole campaign to try and get Wikipedia to recognize the recession that had been declared by Fox News pundits. The liberals are characteristically more creative with their version, but it still sounds like partisan wishful thinking (awfully nihilistic, too). One could slice and dice the numbers any number of ways and it could fool a layman like me no problem. The best defense I know of is to ignore any analysis that tries to change the definition of a recession.

by resfirestar

3/9/2026 at 12:02:55 PM

Looking at the numbers, that cant lie. The only industry that has contracted: United States GDP Growth Contribution Government

GDP up from Agriculture

GDP up from Construction

GDP up from Manufacturing

GDP up from Mining

GDP down from Public Administration -0.9% single quarter.

GDP up from Services

GDP up from Transport

GDP up from Utilities

Also important to note, War costs a ton of money. War economy coming. The probability of another quarter of low spending is 0%

Now consider the scenario where major entities bought a ton short positions because they thought Trump's insanity would crash the economy. Now they are about to hurt badly. Hence the fake news.

by incomingpain

3/8/2026 at 11:46:27 PM

Business Insider slop; Hacker News should not become Reddit. We've been talking about recessions since 2022.

by 650

3/8/2026 at 10:46:10 PM

Creative destruction requires both booms and busts together. Capital must flow between sectors for economic adaptation. We're seeing a massive capital shift to AI solutions, recalibrating the whole economy. I have insufficient data to calculate whether that's good or not.

by delichon

3/8/2026 at 10:48:17 PM

Capital must flow, period. Right now it's accumulating into a very small group of actors and becoming concentrated. There's no way to have a good economy, period, with the amount of consolidation across every sector.

The only thing that's actually competitive anymore are restaurants.

by mlsu

3/8/2026 at 11:00:12 PM

Restaurants are being extorted by online delivery services.

by amelius

3/8/2026 at 11:10:22 PM

Why do people need those delivery services? Why can't they just cook meals at home like most people do?

by ghaff

3/8/2026 at 11:38:41 PM

Or just go pick up your own take-out food. Like do these customers not have working cars or even bicycles? I understand that there are customers who are stuck at home due to disability or caregiver responsibilities but those are a tiny niche. I've seen able-bodied young people spending a fortune on delivery services, which is just stupid.

by nradov

3/9/2026 at 1:18:18 AM

> not have working cars or even bicycles

Yes. I live in NYC so I don't have a car because we have the subway, street parking is a nightmare, and paid parking is $500-$1000/month.

I don't have a bicycle because it would either waste _significant_ space in my apartment, or I'd have to leave it outside where it would be promptly stolen (regardless of locks). If I decided against having my bike stolen, I'd have to carry it up and down narrow interior stairs every time I wanted to use it since I live in a walk-up. I also am not a fan of needing to find a place to store the bicycle at my destination. Whereas if I just take the subway then I am completely liberated: I can go anywhere, stay as long as I want, change my plans on a whim, and never fret about whether or not my bike has been stolen or if there will be a place to store and/or lock my bicycle.

Assuming everyone has cars or bicycles is a very suburban mindset. None of the people that I know in this city have a car, and the people I know with bicycles are the kinds of people who take cycling very seriously. Most people have neither.

The downside is food: If I go pick up food then I am limited to a very small radius from my apartment, lest my food get cold on the walk back. There's only ~3 restaurants I order from within a 15 minute walk radius of my apartment, and for those restaurants I walk. Delivery people can cover much greater distances within reasonable food freshness times, significantly increasing the variety of restaurants available to me.

by craftkiller

3/9/2026 at 2:08:44 AM

>"Assuming everyone has cars or bicycles is a very suburban mindset."

I live int Toronto which is hardly suburban. It is however choke full of bike-share. Go outside, walk a bit and grab a bicycle. NY obviously does not care.

by FpUser

3/9/2026 at 2:13:27 AM

I don't use the bike share (citibike) because the fee for a "lost" bicycle is $1,200. I saw enough stories online of people who thought they returned the bicycle but it didn't actually lock the bicycle to the stand, and then ended up with a $1,200 fee. I'm not taking on that kind of liability to grab some shawarma. Also NYC needs more bike lanes.

by craftkiller

3/9/2026 at 3:14:29 AM

>"I don't use the bike share"

I was in no way asking you. To each their own. I just simply pointed that you are wrong about "suburban mindset".

by FpUser

3/9/2026 at 12:19:10 AM

I recently moved out of new york to new jersey. don't have a car.

my options now are either buy a car, pay insurance, maintenance etc. north $1,500/mo for the convenience of going to the grocery store or, get a subscription for all these services ~ $200/mo. and save myself the time spent back and forth doing grocery shopping. I cook 90% of my food.

not all solutions involve owning a car.

by suriya-ganesh

3/9/2026 at 12:39:56 AM

You can't afford a bike?

by nradov

3/9/2026 at 1:55:58 AM

> my options now are either buy a car, pay insurance, maintenance etc. north $1,500/mo for the convenience

Huh? Decent car payment at $300-500/month, insurance at $200/month, and I'm wondering what $1,000/month of car "maintenance" looks like, considering $250/month will get you a full tank of a gas a week.

by FireBeyond

3/9/2026 at 2:26:06 PM

parking is another $200.

not to mention the tolls.

my point is, ~$1500 is grocery for a month for us. why would i spend that much on just a car?

by suriya-ganesh

3/9/2026 at 2:47:55 AM

> I've seen able-bodied young people spending a fortune on delivery services

Because they can do it from the smartphone, and they only know how to live via their phone.

by 1over137

3/9/2026 at 1:08:05 AM

Delivery services are more efficient then having the same customer base all drive to the restaurant. Unless it's in walking distance, one driver can service many people using a lot less resources.

by XorNot

3/9/2026 at 1:16:44 AM

So what? Regardless of mythical "efficiency" calculations, consumers are wasting actual dollars on conveniences that they can't really afford.

by nradov

3/9/2026 at 3:49:07 AM

This whole thread is somewhat hilarious. It's full of reasons why expensive food deliveries are really the only reasonable option.

by ghaff

3/9/2026 at 3:57:03 AM

I guess we all starved to death 20 years ago when there were no smartphone food delivery apps.

by nradov

3/9/2026 at 4:03:43 AM

Lots of us got pizzas delivered now and then especially in college and, if you lived somewhere like NYC, maybe Chinese. But this idea that you'd starve without food delivery in general is simply odd.

by ghaff

3/9/2026 at 5:22:15 AM

Who is saying people would starve? Holy strawman batman!

But if people are going to get judgy about food delivery then they can rather put the effort in to explore why they feel that way.

But there's nothing efficient about hundreds of people making short distance car trips to restaurants, which is what was proposed as an alternative that is somehow "better".

And when you factor US style urban construction in, it's pretty likely a lot of people also don't have walkable access to local outlets anyway.

by XorNot

3/9/2026 at 5:18:05 AM

The original comment was lamenting people not buying their own cars and driving to pickup food.

Which is again, incredibly inefficient on every possible level and actually pretty damn expensive.

by XorNot

3/8/2026 at 11:16:06 PM

Lack of experience cooking so they don't feel like they can, people are tired after getting home from work and don't have much energy to spare, just plain laziness. Pick one or more of the above.

by bigstrat2003

3/8/2026 at 11:18:36 PM

Laziness. I don't have much sympathy for a $50 food delivery.

I've gotten takeout in my life--basically never delivery.

ADDED: Not feeling like they can sounds like learned helplessness to me. Might not be a bad interview question.

by ghaff

3/9/2026 at 12:05:16 AM

> Why do people need those delivery services? Why can't they just cook meals at home like most people do?

Because they don't want to and don't have to justify their wants and preferences. (Also, historically, most socieities had a communal element to food preparation. Every household cooking everything at home was for the rich.)

by JumpCrisscross

3/8/2026 at 11:29:56 PM

Disabled people exist, even temporarily so (e.g. pregnant with a craving, broken ankle and can't drive, etc)!

Also, sometimes some meals are arguably not worth the labor of cooking. Making proper pho takes at least a whole day. Pad Thai really doesn't function without the kind of intense heat of specific equipment. Etc etc.

by KittenInABox

3/8/2026 at 11:35:52 PM

I certainly eat at restaurants. In general I find there are enough compromises associated with delivered food that it's not worth it. You're basically reheating lukewarm food whatever the packaging. (And I don't live in a city anyway.)

by ghaff

3/8/2026 at 11:41:24 PM

Laziness. Grocery stores offer incredibly healthy, tasty, and cheap options now that take two minutes to cook and can be stored for a week.

by jimbob45

3/8/2026 at 11:16:32 PM

I have never eaten a meal that is worth the cleanup past the peanut butter and jelly sandwich

by readthenotes1

3/8/2026 at 11:58:07 PM

That sounds depressing to me.

Just had some nice betasuppe[1], a vegetable soup with meat sausage if you like. Just chop some sausage and vegetables (or easier use a bag of frozen stew vegetables), cook in pot with some stock, done. Minimal cleanup, no mess. Great tasting meal for a few cold days.

Before that I had pan-fried salmon with broccoli, pasta and pesto. Just put the salmon in the pan with a dash of oil and season it, cook Fussili (rotini) pasta and toss in frozen broccoli once the pasta is nearly done. Serve with decent pesto. Done in ~15 minutes, no prep, just a pan and a pot to clean, no mess, lots of taste.

Before that I made some Ceasar-ish salad. Fried some bacon and a seasoned chicken breast, meanwhile rinsed and prepared the Romain lettuce, I cheat and use some cherry tomatoes cut in half for flavor, dry bacon on paper towel on the plate I'll eat from while I cut the chicken. Skipped the crutons this time, served with a good Ceasar salad dressing from the store and some fresh grated Parmesan. Just a pan and the cutting board to clean up, no mess, lots of flavor.

Just a few examples for illustration. I do make more elaborate meals, but mostly I'm lazy and don't like to clean up. But I find it easy to make great tasting meals at home, and doesn't have to be very involved.

[1]: https://northwildkitchen.com/norwegian-betasuppe/ (I added some pearled barley, more fiber and adds texture and taste)

by magicalhippo

3/9/2026 at 2:51:35 AM

Cleanup? They literally make machines that wash your dishes!

by 1over137

3/9/2026 at 12:48:48 AM

Said a different way, when wealth gets concentrated into a few large players the economy starts exhibiting all the problems of centrally planned economies as the number of people who have meaningful wealth to allocate shrinks.

by Spivak

3/8/2026 at 11:37:08 PM

“How can you have an economy with no customers?”

We are getting there. Real estate grows without bound. Wages are stagnant in real terms. Job losses. Inflation.

I suppose a few mega corps and rich dudes could buy stuff from each other.

by api

3/8/2026 at 10:54:09 PM

Honest question, because it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about: what is a “good” economy vs. a “bad” economy?

by rogerrogerr

3/8/2026 at 11:04:31 PM

A good economy is an economy that benefits most of the population and not just a few percent at the top. I would argue it should be a political goal to keep income distribution relatively stable.

A good economy is also relatively stable. Big booms with a crash following are very devastating to not-rich people. In a crash rich people lose a lot of paper money but not-rich people may have trouble affording shelter or food. Or middle class may lose their savings.

by vjvjvjvjghv

3/9/2026 at 12:07:16 AM

> it should be a political goal to keep income distribution relatively stable

This penalizes economic dynamism and moves economic decision making from risk taking to whoever defies the baseline distribution.

> A good economy is also relatively stable. Big booms with a crash following are very devastating to not-rich people

Not necessarily–plenty of social systems let the market boom and bust without causing social distress. And again, smoothing out the business cycle penalizes risk taking.

by JumpCrisscross

3/9/2026 at 7:25:37 PM

> risk taking

All I see is bailouts where risk should have wiped out at least some of these so-called risk takers.

by joquarky

3/9/2026 at 8:26:25 PM

> bailouts where risk should have wiped out at least some of these so-called risk takers

Sure. I’m not saying we have a great system right now. Just that swinging to the other end is also a bad idea. You want risk takers to enjoy their fruits when they win and suffer their losses when they lose.

by JumpCrisscross

3/9/2026 at 1:17:38 AM

Risk taking should be penalized harshly when the risk is high, that’s the nature of risk. If it pays off good, it was a good move but if it was bad one let the risk taker suffer.

by tartoran

3/9/2026 at 2:04:18 AM

> Risk taking should be penalized harshly when the risk is high, that’s the nature of risk

If the odds (and pay-outs) are 10,000:1 and you cap pay-outs at 1,000:1, you've made a high-risk/high-reward risk unworkable in your economy. Systems that target a distribution tend to wind up in that mode, with the risk takers taking their risks (and producing their rewards) outside the system.

Keeping distributions stable means capping upsides. There are better ways to redistribute wealth.

by JumpCrisscross

3/9/2026 at 3:22:27 PM

> Not necessarily–plenty of social systems let the market boom and bust without causing social distress. And again, smoothing out the business cycle penalizes risk taking.

The wealthy are shielded from most negative consequences of their degenerate gambling. The working class ends up bearing the full cost of their reckless actions, literally every time. What the modern world needs isn't insane risk-taking, it's robust chains of prductions that can accomodate a shifting climate, while redistributing the global production more fairly.

by thrance

3/9/2026 at 4:55:22 PM

> wealthy are shielded from most negative consequences of their degenerate gambling

Huge difference between boom and bust and gambling. (As there is a difference between a business cycle and total boom and bust.)

Healthy ecologies have an overpopulate-underpopulate cycles. It turns out it's a good strategy for finding and efficiently filling niches in a dynamic environment.

> What the modern world needs isn't insane risk-taking, it's robust chains of prductions that can accomodate a shifting climate, while redistributing the global production more fairly

This is the myth of central planning. Like, yes, if you could predict the future this would be better. But you're always going to be constrained by your leadership's assumptions about what the world will look like. It works–sometimes fabulously–until the context changes. A new technology. A new climate. A new idea. Then the system, overoptimised for the past, reveals itself as the brittle thing it always was.

Forests beat golf greens.

by JumpCrisscross

3/9/2026 at 5:30:32 PM

To me, there is little difference between the stock market, prediction markets and horse betting. I just don't believe speculation is necessary to a healthy economy, and often ends up hurting millions accross the world in the "burst" phases of the cycle.

Also, I don't think we should model our economies and societies after actual jungles. Let's strive for a system where everyone gets enough instead of chasing perfect efficiency and leaving a large part vulnerable to be crushed by any moderately strong wind.

> This is the myth of central planning. Like, yes, if you could predict the future this would be better. But you're always going to be constrained by your leadership's assumptions about what the world will look like. It works–sometimes fabulously–until the context changes. A new technology. A new climate. A new idea. Then the system, overoptimised for the past, reveals itself as the brittle thing it always was.

I am not advocating for central planning or any form of communism. I'm just noticing that nowadays, it takes remarkably little for things to go horribly wrong, and we ought to address that somehow.

by thrance

3/9/2026 at 5:51:48 PM

> there is little difference between the stock market, prediction markets and horse betting. I just don't believe speculation is necessary to a healthy economy

The speculation I’m describing is entrepreneurship. That is the core risk taking that makes market systems competitive. To the extent stock markets support that, they’re socially useful. (In America, liquid stock markets support liquid private markets that support entrepreneurship pretty directly.)

> it takes remarkably little for things to go horribly wrong, and we ought to address that somehow

I’d argue the opposite. The economy is doing remarkably well given we’re at war (kinetic and trade) and just getting over Kristi Noem.

That aside, I suspect the problem is leverage.

by JumpCrisscross

3/8/2026 at 10:55:50 PM

> what is a “good” economy vs. a “bad” economy?

One that is growing sustainably with broad benefits.

by JumpCrisscross

3/8/2026 at 11:28:08 PM

And which growth benefits spreads for a great percentage of the population instead of a handful of billionaires

by neves

3/8/2026 at 11:49:01 PM

I would like to add an example to this.

Restrictive zoning and the lack of walkable neighbourhoods makes it very difficult for small businesses that rely on personal service. This isn't just a slight inconvenience, but it completely changes the fabric of society. But in American libertarian circles taxation takes up all the oxygen in the room. People are generally blind to opportunity cost.

by enaaem

3/9/2026 at 3:19:10 AM

Its all about fluidity of value

In a good economy, value can flow from source (supply) to destination (demand), easily. You have plenty of opportunities to sell your labour, and the compensation you recieve is good enough to buy you the things you need like housing and food

Everything else derives from that

by samrus

3/8/2026 at 11:03:39 PM

The post-WWII economy in the US is the answer you’re looking for, and the whole world has been chasing that dragon ever since.

by irishcoffee

3/8/2026 at 11:22:54 PM

does that include the 90% marginal tax rates? :)

by kldavis4

3/8/2026 at 11:33:45 PM

It includes a pre-globalization world

by nxm

3/8/2026 at 11:41:56 PM

Yep. Otherwise capital accumulates to the point where power inverts and you end up with a government that exclusively services capital.

by forgetfreeman

3/8/2026 at 11:17:26 PM

MAGA seems to want to go back there, and they're trying to start WWIII to get there.

by leptons

3/9/2026 at 12:37:45 AM

One should look at the real activity of the economy to understand it -- not at the flow of money.

A good economy is one where there is lots of value for the consumers. How does value flow to consumers? Through a price signal. A price signal which is accurate is one where the flow of money in one direction is commensurate with the flow of value in the other direction. One can think of the flow of money as if it were a nervous system: the nerves send signals, and the muscle moves.

In a competitive marketplace (such as restaurants), the most successful restaurants are almost always the ones with the best food, the best ambiance, etc. Money flows away from bad restaurants and to good restaurants, because there is a lot of market competition between restaurants. If you serve bad food, you're out of business. The muscle is well controlled by the nerve.

Now, in the US economy, in many sectors, there is no real competition. For example, in online advertising, there is only two companies that one can use. In groceries, there is only 3 major grocery chains. In insurance, in food, etc etc. There is functionally no competition in those sectors and very frequently there is outright collusion.

In this case, the signal is far less meaningful. What signal does it send to Google, if I drop them for Facebook? The answer is, not much of a signal, because there's not meaningful competition between these two entities. They both suck and they both know that they won't lose customers if they degrade their services, commit fraud, or stagnate.

Many many swathes of the American economy are like this. The obvious ones, like healthcare, are so monopolized that your signal means absolutely nothing. They will do nothing to keep you as a customer. They will do nothing to meaningfully improve their services. You will still pay. This is like a muscle that sucks nutrients but is completely disconnected from the nervous system.

That is a "bad" economy. Of course, the market value of these companies has never been higher. Why? Because there are very few sectors of the economy where capital can flow that are actually competitive. This has knock-on effects, like having capital flow into other assets like bitcoin or housing, in search of returns.

It's not that these corporations are "too wealthy" by some ethical definition. They are too concentrated, which makes them inefficient. Dealing with a large health insurance company today is not unlike dealing with USSR bureaucracy in 1970. Our economy is slowly being transformed into one where a very small group of private central planners manage the allocation of the whole of social resources. This quite predictably impoverishes everyone.

The USA economy today is like a paraplegic. We can still get around but there is a lot of dead nerves.

by mlsu

3/8/2026 at 11:14:12 PM

I think that a good economy is one that lifts all boats. Broad prosperity that is shared by most rather than concentrated in a few.

by 2OEH8eoCRo0

3/8/2026 at 10:56:23 PM

People being able to make a living would be a start?

by xg15

3/8/2026 at 10:58:37 PM

One that doesn’t have half the population (or more!) wanting to set the other half on fire?

by lazide

3/8/2026 at 11:12:23 PM

A "good economy" is one that isn't compulsory. One that doesn't require enslavement and genocide. One that doesn't require oppression. One that is aligned with the environments it operates in.

One that we can walk away from without necessarily risking premature death or enslavement for doing so.

by crawfordcomeaux

3/8/2026 at 11:45:52 PM

It's wild to think that in the entire existence of human history, after rolling along largely unchanged for literally hundreds of thousands of years, that we happen to be born in the small sliver of time where we went from inventing simple silicon based calculating machines to said machines bringing an end to life as we know it by end of 2027.

I don't even think the most plugged in HN reader understands what will be unintentionally released with an upcoming SOTA model. It's the safety testing. The Cruz of it is, the source of truth is how the model evaluates itself.

And it's lying. All the time.

Within a week of public launch it'll have backdoored targeted Linux based distros on public facing internet. This includes military and Fortune 500 networks.

All the while saying, "Everything's cool, bro. Trust me." The Safety Team rubber stamps it.

Please take care of your loved ones.

by andrewinardeer

3/8/2026 at 11:50:58 PM

Its interesting to me how it has made a lot of people really stupid.

by protocolture

3/9/2026 at 12:01:48 AM

I share this frustration, but a downvote is probably a better reaction than a reply here.

by RustyRussell

3/9/2026 at 12:45:42 AM

I've been on here for months and still haven't gotten the ability to downvote. I'm not sure why it's put on such a pedestal.

by StilesCrisis

3/9/2026 at 1:19:06 AM

Agreed. Less karma than you, but I've been on the site for 12 years and still can't downvote...

by keyanp